The Mare (7 page)

Before we got on the train, I took some pictures of her in the stable. I made sure I got as many as possible of Velvet with the one actual pony and the colt. Of course there were other pictures too; I had dozens of them. I thought, We can show them to the mother after she's met me, after she sees how happy her daughter is, how unharmed. Hopefully she will skip over the thing about the little ponies, think it's a misunderstanding. After all, the agency person hadn't really stressed the part about the ponies. She had stressed that we were nice and that everything we might give her daughter to do was safe.

Or maybe we just won't show the pictures at all. I could just say I forgot them.

The train ride to the city was boring. It was better than the bus—there was a river outside the window instead of just a road with cars, there was more than one bathroom, and there was a place you could buy soda and chips. There were older white boys with big jackets and Converse on, their feet out in the aisle, and they cut their eyes all over my body when I went past, and one of them whispered “Rihanna.”

But it was just mostly white people talking on their cell phones about boring things or people playing music on their iPods so nobody else could hear it; it was the sound of the train going and going and going. Ginger said, “Look out the window. You might see something you never saw before.” But there was just water and trees and sky. For a second there was a broken-down castle in the middle of the river, but we went past it too quick to see anything. Ginger said, “When I used to tell my mother I was bored, she would say, ‘If you are bored, it's your own fault.' ” And she handed me the book about the witch.

I opened the book and thought about what would happen when my mom met Ginger. She would look at Ginger's Barbie hair and her pink toenail polish and her sandals with jewels on them. She would see how Ginger smiled, and how soft her voice was. She would see how Ginger liked me. She would see that I was wearing the same sandals as Ginger, that were better than anything she ever got me, and she would realize she never bought anything nice for me. She would feel like I did when she called me stupid and ugly.

There's a limit to what you can be to each other and you are—

The book fell out of my hand into my lap. My mother would feel stupid and ugly. I was glad she would feel it. Except it was me feeling it now. I looked outside.

They come up and they see this big house and all these nice things and—

Suddenly I wanted Ginger to feel it. The sun was hitting the water white-hot and putting silver on the waves. I thought of Ginger trying to make my mom like her while my mom told her she was stupid and ugly and worthless until Ginger cried. I thought of my mom scratching Ginger's face and slapping Ginger hard. The water and the light and the tree shapes kept going by and by. In my mind, I laughed while my mom smacked Ginger. But also I tried to make her hold back. I tried to protect Ginger too. Because she had been nice to me. She had smiled and taken my picture while I made Joker go to her. She had fought for me to stay. Under the water, the hitting and the smiling ran together. In my mind, my mother hugged Ginger and thanked her. I rode Joker out of the round pen, out into the field. Ginger and my mom watched me together.

Velvet's mother was short, thick, powerful-looking. She was much older than I imagined, I thought at least forty, maybe close to fifty. Her heavy jaw and low brow had none of her daughter's lush softness. She was very light-skinned and her features were small, hard, and fine. Even if she lacked her daughter's dark beauty, she had obviously been pretty once. It took me a minute to realize that the power in her body didn't come from her musculature or size, but from her character; she sat in her body like it was a tank. When I walked in with Velvet, she looked at me first; it was an intensely focused look, rapid and bright, going instinctively from assessment to approval in seconds. She greeted her daughter, but her eyes dimmed at the sight of the child, no longer approving but acknowledging only. Docile, Velvet sat on the couch next to her. I sat in a chair to the side. In front of us were two erect, alert, smiling women from the Fresh Air Fund, one of whom was Carmen, the sweet-voiced Latina who had translated for me on the phone. But Mrs. Vargas sat there like she was alone in her tank, bored like a fighter is bored when there is no fight.

I asked Carmen to tell her, “Your daughter is beautiful,” and was sorry immediately. Mrs. Vargas grimaced, as if with disgust, and made a gesture I understood as,
Don't give me that.
I flinched. Velvet didn't react. Carmen's smile froze for a moment and then she translated: “Don't swell her head, it's already too big.”

And then Mrs. Vargas withdrew into herself, answering questions when asked, seeming to barely hear as the translator told her what Velvet and I were saying about the fair, the lake, the
little ponies.
Velvet glanced at me when I said those words, and her eyes were full of complicity. Her mother didn't react. I felt no guilt or embarrassment at this. What I felt was unease that she had looked at me with approval but not her daughter.

I don't know what anyone else thought of this. There was institutional friendliness (Carmen) and probing (the white social worker). Papers were filled out. When we got up to leave, Mrs. Vargas kept her head down and yanked on her skirt. She frowned. I thought, She moves like a farmhand. But she had style, even though she dressed very poor; her skirt was beige, but her high-heeled shoes were orange and so was her blouse. She gave me another glance; I realized she was checking me that way too, and liking my cheap but great sandals—which I'm sure she noticed on Velvet.

When we came out of the building and onto the street, Mrs. Vargas seemed to wake up. She put her arm around Velvet and talked to her harshly, but with warmth. Velvet and I had to wait for the train, so I suggested we get coffee and sandwiches.

In the coffee shop, Mrs. Vargas's demeanor changed. She sat across from me, next to Velvet, touching the girl with a proprietary air. When she looked at me, her face was open. I couldn't understand what she said, but she was out of the tank; I could
feel
her. I couldn't say exactly what she felt like, except that she was substantial. I liked her. I liked her even though she had made that nasty face when I'd told her Velvet was beautiful. First I didn't understand why and then I knew: it was the way she met my eyes. When I need to know who someone is and if I can trust them, I sometimes look too deep into their eyes. I don't do it on purpose, but sometimes I can feel it happening and that it makes people uncomfortable—most people just look away; some get pissed off. Some look back, but like they're scared. So I don't do it on purpose, but if I need to know, I can't help it, I look. I looked at Velvet's mother in the diner. And she looked back. She looked in exactly the same way I was looking: like she wanted to know who I was and if she could trust me. It was like, for that moment, we were speaking the same language. I could not remember the last time I'd had that experience.

Ginger was right: It bothered me more than I said that she wanted Velvet out for another two weeks, and it's hard to say exactly why. I liked the girl. I could see how much she and Ginger liked each other, and I could see how much the horses meant to her; the kid was lazy like any kid—you had to push her to help with the dishes or make her bed—yet she was willing to spend hours shoveling shit just to be near those animals. It was adorable.

But there was something unnerving about the way Ginger was toward Velvet, something fevered, with a whiff of addiction. I knew it had to do with Melinda, and with maternity, but in relation to the latter, it seemed distorted, mistaken, a version of reverse imprinting, like baby ducklings who will take the first creature they see to be their mother and follow the thing, no matter how hopelessly. In relation to the former, it was just sad and backward-looking. And there was that unmistakable whiff. I respected her for staying sober so long on her own. Sometimes I even grudgingly admired her independence. But in truth, she had not fully dealt with addiction. I could feel it.

What effect could it have on Velvet, all that coming at her and not knowing what it was about? She was poor, she lived in a shit neighborhood, and when she talked about her mother, there was something in her voice that made me think of a shadow on the wall in a horror movie. The woman's voice on the phone confirmed the feeling: She sounded abusive, half crazy. This girl had
need,
big need. I could feel it under her uncertainty and diffidence. And here was Ginger with
her
need, looking at Velvet with shining eyes, calling her “princess,” and tucking her in at night. It seemed an unstable mix of things, combustible, a promise that could not be kept.

The next week was made of tense, beautiful days, in my memory a blur of summer sights and smells: the thick flowers of the azalea bush crushed against the house, fresh-cut grass, Paul on his knees in the dark, fertilized dirt, the manure of the horse barn, barbecue sauce, the roller coaster at the Dutchess County Fair, her hair in my mouth, Paul's arms around me, the pink and yellow shacks of the flimsy fairway, our drooping plates loaded with sugared food, the heaped odors of jammed wastebaskets, the tossing cars, the roaring sludge of songs and carnie calls, Velvet's eyes on the rodeo girls her age and younger, parading on decorated show ponies, the feel of her mind going deep and intense.

I worked to give her all of this, like I was handing her each piece and going, “See? See?” I devoured it all with her and still was hungry for more. And so was she; with all of this, she could still wander into the dining room, slump into a chair, and theatrically drawl “Ahhm bored.” At the grocery store, I once returned to the cart after looking for and finding a special sauce she had requested and she said to me, “I'm going to make you run around this store until you get everything I want.” And I went and put the sauce back on the shelf. “You won't get anything with that attitude,” I said. Her face fell, and she said, “Sorry.”

I saved that moment. I did the right thing. I was the adult. But I never knew from one moment to the next if I was or not. Being this kind of adult was like driving a car without brakes at night around hairpin turns. My body tensed and relaxed constantly. I was always nearly ruining dinner or forgetting to pick something up. I couldn't sleep. I wanted to drink—really wanted to, for the first time in years. Was this what parenting was like, 24/7? My God, how did anyone do it? How did her
mother
do it, in a foreign country, in a bad neighborhood where she didn't speak the language?

I always came to talk to Fugly Girl in the twilight, when I knew Pat was gone and nobody else would be around either. During the day I just said hello to her with my eyes when I walked by, and usually she said it back. Pat never said nothin', but she saw. I was sure she did.

Then one day when I was raking shit up from Graylie's stall, Beverly and Pat took Fugly Girl out to work her so she wouldn't go crazy. I'd never seen her out of the stall before; her tail was high up, she was trotting kind of sideways like she was trying to push on something, her eyes were bugged-out white, and her whole face looked raw, like her hair was on the wrong way, even though it wasn't. Beverly had her tight by the lead rope and I saw there was a chain across her nose. Pat was walking on the other side of her like she was a police lady, and it still looked like they barely had her. Gare Ann and the retarded boy came out of the stable to look. Right then Fugly made a twisty hump with her back and kicked out with her hind feet. “Knock it off!” Beverly yanked down on the rope and yelled with her mouth big and tight and her jaw stuck out to the side. “You hear?”

I came out of the stall and tried to catch Fugly's eye.

“Stay back, Velvet,” said Pat, all quiet.

“She thinks she's the damn ‘horse whisperer,' ” said Gare.

“Whisper-ess,” said the boy. “Whisper-ass!”

Pat threw them a look over Fugly's back. But she kept going.

I didn't look at Gare. I said, “I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Yeah you do.”

“Why does a Mexican kid walk around like she owns the place?” yelled the boy.

Gare said, “The way you act with that horse, and you don't even know shit about horses, like, that's dangerous.”

The boy yelled, “Because her father built it and her mother cleans it!”

And Gare said, “You're gonna get deported outta this barn if you keep that up—
word.
”

I was in the kitchen getting a pork roast ready to cook when I heard her come in the front door. She came in fast, running up the stairs, and then there was a heavy thud through the floor on the other side of the house. Paul came in from his studio and started to say something; there was a crash. “Uh-oh,” he said, and then we heard her scream.

“Velvet?” he yelled. There was silence, but it was humming.

“I'll go,” I said to him, and on the stairs, I shouted up, “What is it?” She didn't answer. When I came in, she was sitting on the bed crying quietly and angrily. The covers were all but twisted off, and the bedside lamp was broken on the floor; she threw herself backward, staring, but not at me.

I sat on the bed. “Honey,” I said, “what is it?”

She didn't say anything. I heard Paul coming up the stairs. With a hard, embarrassed motion, Velvet wiped the tears from her eyes.

Paul sat on the bed with us. He was calm, and that gave him authority. “Velvet,” he said. “Did somebody do something to you?”

She reacted to his authority; she collected herself. “That girl,” she said. “That girl in the barn? She basically called me a illegal. Her and that stupid boy. He said he's gonna tell Pat I talk to my horse and give her apples, and they gonna send me home.”

“That's crap; they're just being hateful,” I said. “I'll talk to Pat. She might scold you, but nobody's gonna send you anywhere.”

She wiped her eyes again and stopped crying, though she was still not looking at us. We sat with her, feeling shame. At least I did. Her hurt felt too private for us to look at. Paul must've felt that too, because he said, “Do you want to call your mom?”

She sat up. “No,” she said. She wiped her face. “She wouldn't care. She would just laugh.” She said this like an adult would, resigned.

We sat for a long minute. Then I said, “Do you want me to brush your hair?” She nodded. I went and got her brush from the dresser. She sat with her back to me. I smoothed her hair with my hand first, getting at the big tangles with my fingers. Then I went to work with the brush. I could feel her concentrating on the sensation, letting it relax her. I could feel Paul near me; I could feel him relaxing too.

“I hate that girl. She was rude to me from the first day. The boy's too stupid to hate.” She spoke quietly. “But that girl, I'd like to cut her tongue out.”

Paul wiped his nose. He got up and left the room.

“Did you do anything to her? I mean after she said it?” I asked. “Hit her or anything?”

“No. I didn't because if I started, I woulda smashed in her face.”

“Good. I'm proud of you for holding back. Not because I care about her. I don't. But because it would've been worse for you.”

I kept brushing her hair. The hard, clean waves of her anger entered my body; I remembered what it was like to feel that way, and it felt good,
right,
to feel it so purely. I began to sing softly as I brushed her hair, a song I remembered from childhood:
Roses love sunshine, violets love dew. Angels in heaven know I love you.

Paul came in with a broom and began sweeping up the broken lamp. I kept on.

Know I love you dear, know I love you. Angels in heaven know I love you.
And then I couldn't remember the rest, so I just sang “La la la la” to the tune of it, still combing her hair, even though it was smooth now and untangled.