The Mare (32 page)

Because I got the phone call from Ms. Johnson that first school week, I called her, maybe once every month. I knew she wasn't supposed to talk to me, and usually she didn't. But every now and then she would return my call and let me know how Velvet was doing. At first it seemed she was back on track; then I could tell Ms. Johnson was being optimistic for my sake; then she told me Velvet had been given detention for bullying a teacher. I thought I hadn't heard right. I had. Velvet had joined a group of girls who ganged up on and bullied a substitute teacher.

“They didn't hurt him,” said Ms. Johnson, “it's more like they—”

“
Him
? They attacked a male teacher?
Girls
?”

“They didn't attack, its more like they picked on him.”

“
Picked on him
? A man?”

“He's new and not so young, and he's small and real nervous. They were just, you know, calling names, knocking his things off the desk, flicking at him with their fingers, just basically challenging his authority. I know Velvet wasn't the instigator. But you might want to talk to her about it, let her know you disapprove.”

We had her up to confront her about it; that was my idea. Ginger was ready to cancel the next visit and deal with it on the phone. It was me who said, No, face-to-face. I think it felt like an ambush to her, but that's what she did to some fool—I could just picture the guy—and I wanted to do the same to her, both of us get right on top of her, jab our fingers at her, call her names, see how it felt.

Of course we didn't. We waited until after dinner and then I asked her if it was true. She said no. I said, Then why is Ms. Johnson saying it? She said Ms. Johnson didn't like her. Ginger said, “Stop lying.” Her voice was ice-cold, and Velvet looked down, scowling. Ginger said, “Tell the truth. Just tell the truth.” In Ginger, anger is cold, and I could see anger coming up in Velvet too. I spoke just to assert normal feeling.

“You know I'm a teacher,” I said. “Do you know how hard it is to go into class sometimes? When you know the students don't like you and don't want to hear anything you say and still you have to try to make it good for them, make it exciting? When you don't feel excited at all?”

She looked at me and said nothing.

“Why did you treat somebody like that?” asked Ginger.

She said, “I don't know,” and Ginger stood up and
shouted,
“Don't use that tone with me!”

“It's you that's using tone!” cried the girl, and she stood too.

“Easy!” I said.

“Ahh dunno,”
mocked Ginger. “You think I'm an idiot? Answer me! Why did you treat somebody that way?”

“We didn't do nothing!”

“Call him bitch, do this shit”—Ginger triggered her index with her thumb—“at his face?”

“We didn't hurt him!”

“You did! You hurt him like that woman hurt that horse!”

“He's not like a horse, and I didn't have a whip!”

But Ginger had hit home, and she kept at it.

“Was it because he was weak?” she said. “In his body and also here?” Ginger put her hand on her chest.

Velvet looked down; I realized with strange distress that she was upset.

“Look at me!” cried Ginger.

The girl looked, alarmed. Ginger sat down and spoke quietly. “
I'm
weak,” she said. “I'm small and I'm weak.”

Velvet's eyes changed powerfully; I could not define their expression except it was like something in her had stood erect.

“Do I deserve to be treated like that?” asked Ginger softly.

“I'd never treat you like that!”

“That's not what I asked.”

“No! But you don't come around acting like you gonna tell people what to do! If he's too weak to be there, then he shouldn't be there!”

“He probably had to be there,” I said. “If he's doing that and he's not a kid, he really needs the money. And they aren't paying much.”

Lots of things were said; the upshot was that, because of what she'd done, she couldn't see her horse this visit. She accepted that but asked if she could go visit the horses at the barn next door.

“No,” said Ginger. “We can't let you do that because you aren't allowed there and you know it.”

Velvet looked angry for a minute and I thought she was going to explode. But instead her shoulders sagged and she said, “Then what
am
I gonna do?”

“Read,” I said. “Write.”

“I want you to write something specific,” said Ginger. “I want you to write about why you behaved that way to the teacher.”

“
Huh
?”

“Write it and be honest. Then we can do something fun. We can go see a movie. Or walk at night.”

I didn't want to walk, I wanted us to ride in the car and play music. But she said No, we're going to walk. It felt sad because I remembered how much I used to like it, and she still wanted it to be that way. But my mind was different now and the little things in people's yards, their decorations I used to think were so cute—I didn't care about it anymore. There was nothing going on
at all,
except a old person walking his dog and no music, just some kids' voices talking from somewhere in the park. How could anybody stand it? And Ginger was trying so hard, like we walked over a little bridge and she said, “Remember the time we shined a flashlight in the water and we saw an eel?” I was basically ignoring her until she asked: “You're having periods, right?”

“For a year now, Ginger.”

“Do you ever get really, really mad when you have your period?”

I tried to think and couldn't remember.

“Because when I first started? I remember sometimes I would get unbelievably mad. I was once so mad at my mom I remember looking at the back of her head and wanting to kill her and she hadn't even
done
anything. It was scary. And then I started my period and I was like, oh, that was why.”

I pictured Ginger staring at her mom's head and wanting to kill her. I didn't know what to say.

“It's normal, if you feel that way. I feel it too sometimes, but in a different way.”

I said, “Different how?”

“Because I'm on the other end of it. You're starting to have periods and I'm starting to stop. You're coming up and I'm going down.”

And I don't know why, but that made me smile. Not because of her going down. More the way she said it. It made me feel her again, and I wished I could explain: You can't go into a barn weak and tell horses what to do. Horses are real. They don't care who deserves what. They do what they do and if you can't handle it, you shouldn't be there.

When we got back to the house she said she wanted to write some more about what happened with the substitute. She'd written something already, saying she was sorry, that she just did it because she wanted the others kids to like her, that she was afraid to stand up and not go along. It was fine, and when she didn't give me anything new the next day, I thought she'd forgotten about it. But she hadn't forgotten. She handed it to me right before she left, and made me promise to wait until after she was gone to read it. I finally opened it when I was on the train, going back home from Penn Station.

You said I was doing what Beverly did to Joker beat him down inside. But that is not true. A teacher is like a trainer its us who are like the horses. The subsitute was like a trainer acting like he know what he is doing giving commands. But if you give the wrong command or in the wrong way the horse knows its bullshit and they won't do what you say. They ignore you or throw you off of them. I saw Joker throw off Beverly once because she was mean with the bit and also her voice the subsitute wasn't mean but he was stupid saying “Go away! Go away!” like we were bugs he should've said “Go back to your seats.”

And something else, if you are riding horses in a field and one breaks out and starts running they all do. They don't follow you they follow each other. They forget they have riders and they run together maybe so fast everybody will fall off. Like what happened last summer and I didn't tell you. I was the last to fall off. One girl got hurt.

I'm sorry if I was bad to the subsitute. I would not be that way with you ever. But that's what happened. We ran together.

I went to look for him like I always did, walking the block where I met him, and also where we ate. It was so cold it was hard to look sometimes because of keeping my head down in the wind. It was like that when I saw him finally. He was in the restaurant where he took me and he was sitting with Brianna. I went to the other side of the street. I got in a doorway and put up my hood. I got out my phone and I texted, “Hi why don't u call me u ok?” I watched him take out his phone, look at it, and put it away. I saw him sit over his food with his head down, then look up at her. I couldn't see his face.

On the way home with Dante, I saw the lady who went off on the dude that night at the bus stop. She didn't know me; she just went by. But I knew her even though she didn't have her long weave in and her hair was so short she was almost bald, and her eyes were back in her head like she never had the heart to yell at nobody. And I remembered what I heard a girl say at school, that her mama said to her, “Any time you see a bitch with no hair, that bitch ain't got no love neither.”

That's when I heard the text hit my phone. I looked and saw “Hey mami sorry it been crazy get u soon miss u—d”

I should've been pissed off. But in my head I heard that beautiful song on the subway the time my mom hit me in the face.

Then I went home and she threw a envelope at my face. She said, “A letter for you.” She watched while I opened it and read.

Dear Velvet: What you wrote about the teacher was beautiful, especially the part about running together. But you are not a horse. You are a person. We'll talk more soon. Love, Ginger

I put the letter down, smiling. “I got a job today,” said my mom. “So you
should
be happy.”

“Mami, I am happy.”

“A job at the candle factory. Just like that crazy old woman with all the saints.” She laughed. “But Mr. Figuera is still renting his room. So you're still on the couch.”

She called me and told me she got the letter and then yelled at her mother, who yelled back. She yelled at me that her mom got a job but that she was going to let Mr. Figuera keep sleeping in her room and make Velvet sleep on the couch.

I said, “Your mom must really need the money.”

She said, “I don't care what she needs! Why doesn't she sleep on the couch?” Her mother yelled again and Velvet said, “Can you talk to Dante?”

I said, “About
what
?”

Dante said, “Hi.”

So I said, “Hi. What are you doing?”

“Watching
The Simpsons.
” The yelling went up and came back down. “Do you want to know what's happening?” he said.

“Yes, please tell me.”

“Bart went to church and sold his soul! To the devil!”

There was a snatching of air and Velvet said, “Can I come live with you?”

“Honey,” I said, “I don't think you'd really want that.”

When I saw her again, Fiery Girl came to me with love. She made the nicker noise. When I went in the stall with the halter, she put her head down and forward to show me what she felt. I couldn't ride her or even lunge her because the paddock was icy. So I groomed her, brushed her, scratched her, rubbed her. She wiggled her lips.

Ginger said she didn't think I really wanted to come live here because I would miss Dante and my mom. Her voice when she said it was high and hard with no love in it. She was right; I knew it wouldn't be any good for me to live with her. Still, I wanted her to say yes. I wished she had said yes.

I rubbed my mare's legs. Her head was down and her eyes were soft. I remembered how she was when I first got here, how she bit her stall and they had to put that strap on her face, how hard it was to even touch her. I kissed her scars, and I know she felt the love in my lips. Whatever happened with me and Ginger or Ginger and Paul, I had to keep coming here so that I could take care of my mare, always.

“The next time you come, Estella says you're welcome back at her stable,” said Pat.

“Why?”

“I've told her how responsible you've been, and she could see it when you got the mare into the trailer. It probably helps that Beverly's not around.”

“Why is she not around?”

“Let me count the whys! I'm sure you've noticed between the time you started coming and the time you left, there's fewer students, fewer horses boarded. Which is another reason Estella would like you to be there. She'd like you to represent her place at an event coming up—you'd make the place look good.”

I was embarrassed about how I smiled, but I couldn't stop. I said, “I could ride Fiery Girl?”

“I don't think she's the best choice. She
has
jumped before, I'm sure of that now, and she looks good taking the jumps. But she's not consistent like Chloe; she's temperamental—but on the other hand, she
has
competed before so…maybe! If you work hard on schooling her, maybe Fiery Girl.”

I didn't dare say how much I wished she could live here, how I'd dreamed of it, prayed for it. Because then I'd have to tell her that it was Paul who blocked it and she would think he didn't like her—that's how she would feel it. I couldn't talk to Paul about it either. He had changed since the confrontation about the teacher, and I felt him accept Velvet's presence more sincerely. I didn't want to mess that up.